January 21, 2014 Comments Off on Detecting Genuine vs. Feigned DID on Psychological Tests: Implications for Assessment, Forensics, and the Construct Validity of DID

Detecting Genuine vs. Feigned DID on Psychological Tests: Implications for Assessment, Forensics, and the Construct Validity of DID
ISSTD 30th Annual International Conference
Date: Sunday, November 17, 2013

Assessing dissociative identity disorder (DID) can be difficult, particularly because individuals with this disorder often produce extreme elevations on validity scales on some personality tests and interviews. The goal for this study was to provide information about how to distinguish genuine versus feigned DID on widely used personality tests and interviews. A group of SCID-D-R diagnosed DID patients completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) and a forensic gold standard interview, the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS/SIRS-2). In these three papers, we compare the data from the DID group to that from feigners who were exposed to hours of training about DID (i.e., coached simulators) as well as to a feigning group that was not coached about DID (i.e., uncoached simulators). Across the papers, the coached group generally was better able to imitate DID than was the uncoached group. However, neither group was highly successful in feigning DID. Given that well-coached individuals could not successfully imitate DID on well-established psychological tests, this series of studies provides support for the trauma model of dissociation as well as for the construct validity of DID. Furthermore, the results will help assessors and forensic experts better distinguish genuine from feigned DID.http://www.softconference.com/isstd/sessionDetail.asp?SID=330510